A Few Saudis Defy a Rigid Islam to Debate Their Own Intolerance

By NEIL MacFARQUHAR

Published: July 12, 2002

JIDDA, Saudi Arabia — Prompted by the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, a cautious debate is taking place in Saudi Arabia's closed society over intolerance toward non-Muslims and attitudes toward the West that are now viewed by some as inspiring unacceptable violence.

The debate appears to represent a significant shift in a society whose Wahhabi branch of Islam tends to make such questioning taboo.

Mention that 15 of the 19 hijackers involved in attacking America were Saudis to almost any room full of people here, and denials still pour forth. There is no concrete evidence, people will argue, adding that even if Osama bin Laden, a native son, was somehow involved, he was led astray by his rabid Egyptian coterie.

But cracks are beginning to appear in this facade of disavowal. A small group of intellectuals, academics, journalists and religious scholars are quietly suggesting that change is needed.

"We have to confront a lot of things that we thought were normal," said Khaled M. Batarfi, the managing editor of Al Madina, a daily newspaper pushing the limits of what can be published. "We have to examine the opinions that resulted in these bad actions and see if they are wrong, or people just took them out of context."

"Before Sept. 11, it was just an opinion, `I think we should hate the others,' " he said. "After Sept. 11, we found out ourselves that some of those thoughts brought actions that hurt us, that put all Muslims on trial."

Such positions remain controversial. After scores of Saudi religious scholars and academics issued a manifesto this spring suggesting that Muslims might find common ground with the West, they were subjected to withering rebuke by those who accept the Wahhabi notion that Islam thrives on hostility toward infidels.

"You give the false impression that many people condemned the war against America," read one such denunciation on a popular Web site, "But the truth is that many people are happy declaring this war, which gave Muslims a sense of relief."

In another, Sheik Hamad Rais al-Rais, an elderly blind scholar, suggested the manifesto writers showed too much sympathy for the victims of Sept. 11 and debased Islam by neglecting to mention that jihad, or holy war, remains a central tenet.

"You cry for what happened to the Americans in their markets and offices and ministries and the disasters they experienced," he wrote, "and you forget the oppression and injustice and aggression of those Americans against the whole Islamic world."

A number of factors have spurred such debate. Since Sept. 11, the monarchy has eased some suppression of free speech. In addition, a deadly fire at a girl's school in Mecca exposed some of the domestic costs of extremist opinion when trapped students reportedly died because enforcement of modest dress codes kept male rescuers away. In June, the government announced the arrest of a Qaeda cell after months of royal denial that there were any local supporters.

But open discussion of the effects of Wahhabism faces daunting hurdles, not least that hard-line clergy and other scholars with significant influence instantly attack.

The austere teachings of Muhammad bin Abd al-Wahhab, who rejected the worship of saints or idols, have been prevalent in Saudi Arabia for more than two centuries. The ruling Saud dynasty owes its very control over the peninsula's once fractious tribes to the fact that their ancestors championed his teachings.

Saudis abhor the term Wahhabism, feeling it sets them apart and contradicts the notion that Islam is a monolithic faith. But Wahhabi-inspired xenophobia dominates religious discussion in a way not found elsewhere in the Islamic world.

Bookshops in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, for example, sell a 1,265-page souvenir tome that is a kind of "greatest hits" of fatwas on modern life. It is strewn with rulings on shunning non-Muslims: don't smile at them, don't wish them well on their holidays, don't address them as "friend."

A fatwa from Sheik Muhammad bin Othaimeen, whose funeral last year attracted hundreds of thousands of mourners, tackles whether good Muslims can live in infidel lands. The faithful who must live abroad should "harbor enmity and hatred for the infidels and refrain from taking them as friends," it reads in part.

Saudis in general, and senior princes in particular, reject the notion that this kind of teaching helps spawns terrorists.

"Well, of course I hate you because you are Christian, but that doesn't mean I want to kill you," a professor of Islamic law in Riyadh explains to a visiting reporter.

Prince Sattam bin Abel Aziz, at 61 one of the youngest brothers of King Fahd and the longtime deputy governor of Riyadh, holds audiences in a soaring office half the size of a football field. The walls are of white stone and the carpeting a sort of modern Bedouin — bands of triangles and other geometric shapes executed in pink and blue.

When asked about such fatwas, the courtly prince responds, "You cannot say those people represent Islam," and mentions that he attended a Roman Catholic university in San Diego.